Mundane Musings of a Meandering Mind

Cynic – I : Episode 1

Episode – 1 : The Imprisoned Writer

Cynic feels lost nowadays. She wouldn’t confess this to you, though. She portrays herself as completely callous to everything that goes on around her. She has an innate ability to hide and stay hidden. Very few are able to witness Cynic unmask herself. The words in her diary and the frets on her guitar are among the privileged ones. Often, the smoke she devotedly billows, gives good company to them. However, it has been a long while since the smoke got together with her words. She has kept herself busy with lectures, submissions and nerve-wrecking exams. The words she writes nowadays seem static. They all have a single, common intent – better grades. Her pen feels strangled by all the mechanical writing. Her pages miss the life that the flow of ink used to have. The writer within her feels suffocated by the lack of inspired air in her textbook-like words and remains arrested in a prison of peer competition and mono-context words.

Since the mid-semester exams got over, Cynic has felt empty inside. She doesn’t realize that it is the imprisoned writer that is wishing to be set free; she doesn’t see the light that the writer within is wishing to see. The toil through the exam times has weakened her. She cannot figure out what to do. A sip of coffee and two seconds later, her phone gives out a short whimper, as the screen comes to life. She gives a hopeful glance to it. The glance does not disappoint and brings back hope to her heart. As she stares at what has come up on the lit screen, her eyes light up. A long gone smile complements her now radiant face. Sooner than her tongue can say “yes”, her mind makes a decision. She gets up, finishes the coffee and walks towards her hostel room, where her diary has long been awaiting her, pressed under the burden of textbooks. The writer within her leaps for joy. It is time to be freed. The phone screen still reads “1 New Email: [students] [ELS] Online Creative Writing Competiti…”